I'm not a fan of birthday parties, at least when it involves myself. That must be the reason why I completely ignored that six days ago was Quasimondo's first anniversary. On June 12, 2002 I made my initial post which was utterly useless and meaning-free.

The ignition spark to start blogging came to me during Flashforward in San Francisco, when Samuel Wan and Branden Hall mentioned their blogs. Wow - what a great idea! Before that my only area to publicly show off was the experimental lab of coma2, but that did not generate a lot of feedback. So it turned out that a blog is definitely the better ego booster. And wow - how good that worked! My first incoming link came from Jahrle Dahl Bergersen and he linked me again quite often after that. Thanks Jahrle! And of course thanks to all the others who found Quasimondo worthy enough to appear in their sidebars.

So is it worth it? Definitely yes. Even though some things did not happen yet. For example I once received a nice email from Macromedia, but until now I was not invited for any beta. I was not asked to be a speaker on any Flash conference nor did I get free admission. No book publisher has called. I did not receive any software or books to test or review. (Stop - that's not completely correct. Jonathan Kaye sent me Flash MX for Interactive Simulation - which is a great book that it's very different from other flash books I own. And even if you are not into simulation it offers a lot of interesting concepts.) During this first year I did not receive a single job inquiry via Quasimondo. Perhaps I should advertise it a little more that I DO FLASH FOR A LIVING, too. I have an average of 900 readers each day which makes me kind of proud and nervous, too - especially if I have a phase of low inspiration.

What else? Until now I have not managed yet to stop google to ask "Did you mean: quasimodo". BTW - the name has nothing to do with the hunchback or the author but is a combination of "quasi" which means "almost" and "mondo" which is the italian for "world". Put them together and it means - nothing. I just like the sound and I'm a fan of the letter "Q".

I was actually wondering why you didn't mention anything. I saw that your archives started on June 2002, so I went there to find out when exactly in June did you start blogging. Anyway, finally you have acknowledged yourself :)

Well, congratulations for this first whole year and thank you for revealing the mysteries of the word 'quasimondo'. Finally, a personal thank you for being the first one to link me when I started.